Open-access edition of "Morbid Undercurrents: Medical Subcultures in Postrevolutionary France" by Sean M. Quinlan

FAIN: DR-292400-23

Cornell University (Ithaca, NY 14850-2820)
Mahinder Singh Kingra (Project Director: November 2022 to April 2025)

In Morbid Undercurrents, Sean M. Quinlan follows how medical ideas, stemming from the birth of the clinic, zigzagged across the intellectual landscape of the French Revolution and its aftermath. It was a remarkable "hotspot" in the historical timeline, when doctors and scientists pioneered a staggering number of fields—from forensic investigation to evolutionary biology—and their innovations captivated the public imagination. During the 1790s and beyond, medicine left the somber halls of universities and hospitals to become profoundly politicized, inspiring a whole panoply of subcultures. In reconstructing this labyrinthine medical underworld, Quinlan argues that the place and authority of medical science evolved, in part, out of an attempt to redress the dislocation produced by the French Revolution.

Media Coverage

Review (Review)
Author(s): Steven Wilson
Publication: Modern and Contemporary France
Date: 8/3/2023
Abstract: Quinlan's illuminating and thoroughly researched study makes a comprehensive case for the ways in which political upheaval not only galvanised connections between the 'two cultures' of science and the arts at the beginning of the long nineteenth century in France, but how the work of some lesser-known physician-writers, inspired by rather unconventional medical ideas, had a significant ideological impact on attempts to reimagine the body and self in a rapidly changing society.
URL: https://doi.org/10.1080/09639489.2023.2236580

Associated Products

Single Publication (Open Access eBook or Collection)
Publication Type: Single Publication
Title: Morbid Undercurrents: Medical Subcultures in Postrevolutionary France
Year: 2021
ISBN: 9781501758348
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Author: Sean M. Quinlan
Abstract: In Morbid Undercurrents, Sean M. Quinlan follows how medical ideas, stemming from the so-called birth of the clinic, zigzagged across the intellectual landscape of the French Revolution and its aftermath. It was a remarkable "hotspot" in the historical timeline, when doctors and scientists pioneered a staggering number of fields—from forensic investigation to evolutionary biology—and their innovations captivated the public imagination. During the 1790s and beyond, medicine left the somber halls of universities, hospitals, and learned societies and became profoundly politicized, inspiring a whole panoply of different—often bizarre and shocking—subcultures. Quinlan reconstructs the ethos of the time and its labyrinthine underworld, traversing the intersection between medicine and pornography in the works of the Marquis de Sade, efforts to create a "natural history of women," the proliferation of sex manuals and books on family hygiene, anatomical projects to sculpt antique bodies, the rage for physiognomic self-help books that taught readers to identify social and political "types" in post-revolutionary Paris, the use of physiological medicine as a literary genre, and the "mesmerist renaissance" with its charged debates over animal magnetism and somnambulism.
Primary URL: https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501758348/morbid-undercurrents/
Primary URL Description: This URL links to the book's webpage on the Cornell University Press website, which allows users to download the Open Access ebooks as either ePub or PDF files for free.
Secondary URL: https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/255/oa_monograph/book/85572
Secondary URL Description: This URL links to the book's record on the Project MUSE site, indicating its status as an Open Access title. NB: Although updated files with changes to the copyright page indicating that Open Access publication has been supported by the NEH have been disseminated to our ebook partners like Project MUSE and JSTOR, these platforms may not have replaced the existing file with the revised file.
URL 3: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7591/j.ctv1fkgbmz
URL 3 Description: This URL links to the book's record on the JSTOR site, indicating its status as an Open Access title. NB: Although updated files with changes to the copyright page indicating that Open Access publication has been supported by the NEH have been disseminated to our ebook partners like Project MUSE and JSTOR, these platforms may not have replaced the existing file with the revised file.
Type: Single author monograph

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